In which an Ars editor makes three orders in San Jose, but two actually show up.

We at Ars are blessed with being able to work from just about anywhere. Most of us work at home, most of the time. So it was fortuitous today that I was working from San Jose, California, when I caught wind of the fact that Google had just debuted to the general public Google Shopping Express (GSE), its new same-day grocery delivery service, to more parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, including San Jose. (Google also launched iOS and Android apps for GSE, too.)

Google began a test version of this service in March 2013, but now it will expand to the general public from San Francisco to San Jose, and it's free for the first six months. As an Oakland resident, I’m generally out of luck for home delivery for the time being.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Google wrote that it would be partnering with a number of national and local retailers, including Staples, Target, Walgreens, American Eagle, REI, Guitar Center, Whole Foods Market, and local source of high-end caffeine, Blue Bottle Coffee. (Though, you have to actually be in San Francisco to have Blue Bottle’s beans delivered—they wouldn't deliver them to me down in San Jose.)

The last time I used an online grocery delivery service was when I lived in New York (from 2004-2005) and took advantage of FreshDirect to have very specific things that I wanted delivered—and save myself the hassle of dragging those things across town and up to my apartment. I’m also old enough to have used Kozmo.com when it debuted in Los Angeles in the late 1990s. Both services sure were convenient, but one problem with online shopping is that it often requires knowing exactly what you want. Like most other kinds of online shopping, I find that there’s often less chance of serendipity, of finding a product that you didn’t know you wanted. (The fact that my local Trader Joe’s puts its bourbon selection near the checkout line is very tempting!)

Still, I like the idea of online shopping. Sure, I love biking down to the weekly farmer’s market, but remembering to block out time to go shop for something sometimes means that the purchase ends up getting delayed. If I could place an order overnight, or early in the morning, and get it delivered that same day, that could be a pretty nice convenience.

When I took GSE for a spin, it was fairly straightforward, combining a known Google interface with shopping. The search made it simple to query products across different retailers and narrow the search to one retailer. GSE largely abstracts away which retailer you’re buying from—if you want to buy from three retailers in a single order (as I did), it’s pretty easy to do.

The polo-shirted, hybrid-driving fleet

A quick glance through the various products available seemed to suggest that (at least for now) Google is limited to non-perishable (canned or packaged) goods. A search for “tomatoes” turned up a “Yes to Tomatoes Skin Clearing Facial Mask,” as well as canned tomatoes and tomato paste. And Google seems to limit its beverage offerings to non-alcoholic stuff: a search for “beer” turned up only root beer. But there were many things that I could imagine some shoppers might anticipate that they’d need within hours—tampons or condoms, for example.

After I finished selecting my basket of goods—my wife reminded me that she needed Blistex and Tic Tacs—I checked out. Then, I selected a 1-5pm window for today, as I’d already missed the morning delivery window, and lo, $27.56 later, my order was in the queue. I placed the order at 10:58am local time. Payment was easy, because Google already has my payment information through Google Wallet.

One of my biggest questions was whether an order from three separate retailers would be delivered separately or together. When the first part of my order—a two pound bag of flour, a bottle of ranch dressing, and a four-pack of root beer—showed up first, I had my answer. That order, fulfilled by supermarket chain Nob Hill Foods, took just 25 minutes between when the order screen showed “In Transit” to when a delivery man named Laron, dressed in khaki pants and a blue polo shirt, showed up to the San Jose café where I’d been working all day.

I flagged Laron down as he entered the café. Despite Wednesday’s debut, Laron said that today wasn’t very busy, and that he has been doing deliveries between San Jose and San Francisco. He walked back to his car straightaway, tapping at his phone constantly, likely marking that he’d made a delivery and trying to figure out where to go next. Laron’s ride was a white Toyota Prius C hatchback, with “Google Shopping Express” painted on the side (sadly, the car was not a Google self-driving robot car). I noticed that both the car and Laron’s nametag said that the delivery fleet was “Operated by 1-800Courier,” a longstanding delivery service.

The second delivery, which came with two delivery people dressed in green polos, arrived about an hour later. Jennifer, the car’s driver, told me that they had done about 10 deliveries in the South Bay over the course of two hours. She also told me that the drivers did not know the contents of what they were delivering—each bag comes with a sealed delivery label across the top.

The third delivery and the smallest—just two different types of Blistex, ordered from Walgreens—was the one that actually had a bit of a hiccup. While waiting for someone to actually show up to the café where I’d been working, I got an e-mail saying that my goods had been delivered. I knew that couldn’t possibly have been true, as I could see all the cars that pulled up in front of the café. (The other two delivery people had parked directly in front of the café and walked right in with the package.) Twice, I stepped outside the café to see if the delivery person had sneakily (or lazily) left it by the front door. Nothing.

As soon as I noticed this discrepancy, I e-mailed and tweeted at Google and received a reply via both methods within 10 minutes, telling me the company would look into it. After nearly an hour, a representative offered me a refund or a reorder "to avoid any further delay," but he did not offer any explanation as to how this happened. I ended up re-ordering the two Blistex products for my wife and having them sent to her San Francisco office to be delivered on Thursday morning.

The future of shopping

So the bottom line is, would I order from Google again? The short answer is probably, yes, if I could. My Wednesday episode in Google Shopping Express was essentially a one-off for now. After all, Google doesn’t yet actually deliver to my front door in Oakland, but Amazon Prime does.

After initially being skeptical of Amazon Prime, I’ve come to love it over the last year. I no longer have to agonize over whether or not it's worth it to spend an extra few bucks to have something delivered faster to my doorstep. I’ve already made that decision in the form of a $70 annual flat fee. (The video service is a nice bonus!) I’ve used Prime to order things as small as clarinet reeds and composting bags without thinking twice. (Although I have to admit, it had never occurred to me until today to even look for root beer or ranch dressing on Amazon Prime, but indeed, they're there.)

Farhad Manjoo, formerly of Slate and now of The Wall Street Journal, reviewed Google Shopping Express when it first debuted in some parts of San Francisco earlier this year and dubbed these types of services as the “future of shopping.” But when I followed up with him, asking him if he’d continued his use of both services since then, he said yes, but that he used Amazon more.

“I think [I use] Amazon more because [of the] bigger selection. But [Google] is catching up, mostly household goods (paper towels, baby stuff),” he wrote me over Twitter. “I think Amazon prices are usually better, but sometimes Target or other stores have sales, and Google has all sale prices. I don't think I've ever found anything that Google has and Amazon doesn't.”

Of course, though, the main difference here is that Google will deliver same day, and Amazon Prime doesn't (yet). If I could use Google Shopping Express in Oakland and there was something I needed to get immediately, I'd definitely use it.

I’m presuming that sooner rather than later, someone will write some sort of Twitter bot to tell me whether I should order my wife’s favorite ranch dressing from Amazon or Google. (For now, the answer is Amazon.)

UPDATE Thursday 4:12pm CT: My wife eventually did get her two Blistex delivered to her San Francisco office on Thursday, but she said they were each delivered separately, about 15 to 20 minutes apart.

Three automobile deliveries for $27 worth of small items, including one delivery for two packages of Blistex.Sounds like a win for the environment to me.

Regrettably, this. Extra packaging, too. On the face of it, this particular execution of the idea seems to be more luxury than sustainability. Part of the appeal of delivered groceries is slowing down the daily breathing of traffic to and from so many retail locations. Three separate visits hardly seems like an economical replacement. Larger vans packed to bursting and delivering orders of a minimum size along efficiently planned routes would seem more sensible, albeit probably sacrificing immediate deliveries to individual customers in trade for more efficient sequential deliveries. And as big of a pain in the ass as I'm sure it is, getting perishables on board is paramount or else such a service isn't going to replace anybody's trips to the store.

I've been using GSE for about 4-5 months now. I didn't use it much the first few months I had it, but I find I use it about once a week now for items. Initially, I just was used to buying items at stores or at amazon, so I didn't even think twice about it.

Then, one day I found I could by food for my 1 year old on there and it made it quite easy. Normally, if I'm at home watching my son, and find that our household is running low in food for him, I would have to go out and make a trip to the store. This would involve getting the diaper bag ready and in the car, putting my child in his car seat, lugging the car seat into the back of my 2 door car, putting a stroller in my car, driving to a store that sells baby food (the Lucky's near me has a poor selection,) getting him out of the car and into the stroller, go into the store, procure items, wait in line, checkout, and reverse the procedure to go home. Ordering this stuff online has made it so I can spend more meaningful time with him.

My observations on the service after using it for 4-5 months:* Typically if you place your order in the morning you can receive it the same day. There are roughly 3 delivery windows to correspond with morning(starts at 9am), afternoon and evening (ending at 9pm.) Ordering in the morning allows for evening delivery. Occasionally they are booked through and you have get your delivery the next day. If I order in the evening I can usually get my order the next morning. They have a limited number of delivery slots available per day total, so they don't overbook themselves.* Just to test it, I ordered a really small cheap item (I don't recall what it was, but it cost about $1.00) and they delivered it. At a $5 delivery charge per store though, this probably won't make sense for you. * So far haven't had any problems with deliveries. Sometimes they will cancel items ahead of times that have run out of stock. Other times, I've had them procure the item from a different store and delivery it separately with no extra fee. They email you when this happens. * Sometimes they knock on the door, other times they don't. They are really quiet. I'll sometimes not hear anything, and later open my door and find 3 bags. *The jury is still out on whether or not I'll still use the service when they charge me a delivery fee. It will definitely put a damper on the frequency and may limit my selection. Right now to get some of the food I want I have to order from Nob Hill, Target, and Babies R Us.* I'm not a fan of the 80's style Toy's R us and Babies R Us stores, not having to go into them is awesome. * We recycle the bags to use them for cat waste disposal. I tried once to one to put wet scraps of vegetables to compost. Not recommended, the bag broke and tomatoes went everywhere on my floor after only walking about 5 ft from my kitchen. * I find the browse tool seems to be a bit buggy (not showing all items sometimes.) I have filed bug reports with google on various issues such as incomplete descriptions for items and they are quick to reply (at least when they were in beta anyways.)

Three automobile deliveries for $27 worth of small items, including one delivery for two packages of Blistex.Sounds like a win for the environment to me.

If the car is fully loaded and saves 5 people a trip to the grocery store, this will reduce automobile usage. Although, I can see people ordering a few things every day instead of making one trip and buying a lot of things and this would increase automobile usage. The system is promising, but it will be tough to sell it as environmentally friendly.

In high school, I used to deliver groceries and, in my experience, if they simply specialized in delivering cat food to old ladies, they would do good business and would remove some dangerous drivers from the road.

107 posts | registered Dec 13, 2012

Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is due out in May 2018 from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar